Bullfighting will be excluded from Spanish cultural voucher

Bullfighting will be excluded from Spanish cultural vouchers for young people.

On Wednesday, October 6, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, announced that young people who turn 18 during 2022 will be given a 400-euro voucher for cultural purposes. According to sources from the Ministry of Culture speaking to El Pais, bullfighting will be excluded from the voucher’s catalogue.

The ministry said: “Not all the elements that our legislation considers culture are going to be under the protection of this voucher. That is what needs to be defined now, the catalogue of cultural services and products that can be financed through the voucher. As for other cultural industries, we have to wait for the development of the royal decree in which this catalogue will be defined.”

Speaking of the new cultural voucher Sanchez said the voucher will be used “for the purchase of books or for the consumption of any type of artistic or scenic activity, such as theatre, cinema, dance, music”.

A spokesman for the Toro de Lidia Foundation, Chapu Apaolaza spoke to El Pais. This was before he knew that bullfighting would reportedly not be included in the voucher.

Apaolaza said that leaving out bullfighting: “would be a scandal, unthinkable”.

He added: “If the subsidies are to facilitate access to culture, one cannot limit, prune, the number of shows. In aid there are naturally reasons of priority and scarcity, but bullfighting has had an equally bad or worse time than cinema or theatre.”

He commented that if bullfighting is not included then it is: “because members of the government coalition do not like it; it would be totally arbitrary, a decision that the sector would not understand.”

He added: “Previous Ministers of Culture of Sánchez, such as Rodríguez Uribes, have already made it clear that bullfighting is a cultural industry.”

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